Early Reading

Phonics and Early Reading at Chandos

The phonics and reading scheme that we use at Chandos is Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. We use this mostly in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. Elements of the program may be used in Years 3 to 6.


How does Little Wandle work at Chandos and at home?

Day 1- Decoding 

This gives the children the opportunity to practice reading all the sounds and words the book uses.

Day 2- Prosody 

Prosody is the expression we use when reading which makes it sound more interesting. 

Day 3- Comprehension 

During comprehension reading sessions, children learn to understand what they are reading and practice answering questions about it. 

Here is how we say the sounds taught in Reception

Phase 2 sounds taught in Reception Autumn 1

Phase 2 sounds taught in Reception Autumn 2

Phase 3 sounds taught in Reception Spring 1

Here is how we say the sounds taught in Year 1

Phase 5 sounds taught in Year 1

Learning tricky words

Tricky words are high frequency words which means they appear commonly in books. Little Wandle has a special code to be able to read these words but they are known as 'tricky' because children may not have been taught all the sounds they need yet in order to red these common words. Below is a video explaining how we teach children how to read these tricky words as well as the the words taught in Reception and Year 1.


Tricky-words-for-parents-Phase-2-1.pdf

Support for tricky words Reception Autumn term

Tricky-words-for-parents-Phase-3.pdf

Support for tricky words Reception Spring term


Tricky-words-for-parents-Phase-4 (1).pdf

Support for tricky words Reception Summer term


Tricky-words-for-parents-Phase-5.pdf

Support for tricky words for Year 1

Phonics and Early Reading Policy Nov 2022.pdf

Phonics and Early Reading Policy

Readopted September 2023

To find out more information on how we prepare our Nursery children for Little Wandle please look at our Foundations for Phonics Page

For more information... 

Miss Devlin is our English lead. 

Please feel free to speak to her with any questions that you may have.